1. Technical Field
This disclosure relates to organizing framesets and more particularly, to a method for organizing and rendering framesets for browsing the Internet.
2. Description of the Related Art
The World Wide Web (WWW) has enjoyed phenomenal growth over recent years and now accounts for a significant portion of all Internet traffic. The unmitigated success of the WWW bears testimony to the previously unsatisfied need for a system able to integrate and deliver distributed information. The profile of hypermedia has been raised significantly by the WWW, which has endorsed hypermedia as an appropriate technology for accessing and navigating information spaces. Users can access a wealth of information and associated services over the WWW, ranging from, for example, international news to local restaurant menus.
Interactive voice browsers that make extensive use of speech synthesis and recognition offer an alternative paradigm that enables both sighted and visually impaired users to access the WWW. Interactive voice browsers afford ubiquitous mobile access to the WWW using a wide range of consumer devices in addition to the desktop PC. As such, interactive voice browsers can facilitate a safe, hands-free browsing environment, which is of importance to categories of users such as car drivers and various mobile and technical professionals. However, organizing and rendering the hypertext frames or framesets remains difficult for interactive voice browsers. In addition, voice browsers are unable to process and render a significant number of complex HTML document framesets published on the WWW.
Therefore, a need exists for a method for organizing and ordering framesets on the Internet for audio rendering.
A method for linearizing framesets for audibly rendering structured document frames, in accordance with the present invention, includes accessing a document including a frameset. Frames of the frameset are ranked in accordance with positional locations of each frame in the frameset such that each frame is uniquely ordered in the frameset. A linearized document is generated for the frameset for rendering by an audio browser.
Another method for linearizing framesets for audibly rendering structured document frames, includes the steps of downloading a structured document including a frameset, ranking frames of the frameset in accordance with positional locations of each frame in the frameset, sorting the frames of the frame set by ordering the frames based on their relative positions in the frameset such that each frame is uniquely ordered in the frameset and generating a linearized document for the ordered frameset for rendering by an audio browser.
In other methods, the document may include a structured document such as, for example, a Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) document. The step of accessing a document including at least one frameset may include the step of downloading the document from the Internet. The step of ranking frames of the frameset in accordance with positional locations of each frame in the frameset such that each frame is uniquely ordered in the frameset may include the step of ranking the frames based on their relative position. The step of ranking frames of the frameset in accordance with positional locations of each frame in the frameset such that each frame is uniquely ordered in the frameset may include the steps of ranking the frames based on their relative position from a first location to obtain a first index, ranking the frames based on their relative position from a second location to obtain a second index and summing the first and second indices to achieve a final ranking. The method may further include the step of ordering frames having equal indices as a result of the step of summing the first and second indices by providing resolution criteria. The audio browser may include one of a telephone, a computer and a personal digital assistant.
The above methods and method steps may be performed by employing a program storage device readable by machine, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by the machine to perform the method steps.